South Korea: North fired another mis­sile over Ja­pan

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — South Korea’s mil­i­tary said North Korea fired an uniden­ti­fied mis­sile Fri­day from its cap­i­tal Py­ongyang that flew over Ja­pan be­fore land­ing in the north­ern Pa­cific Ocean.

It was the sec­ond ag­gres­sive test-flight over the ter­ri­tory of the close U.S. ally in less than a month and it fol­lowed the sixth and most pow­er­ful nu­clear test by North Korea to date on Sept. 3.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the mis­sile trav­eled about 3,700 kilo­me­ters (2,300 miles) while reach­ing a max­i­mum height of 770 kilo­me­ters (478 miles).

The mis­sile was launched from Su­nan, the site of Py­ongyang’s in­ter­na­tional air­port.

North Korea last month used the air­port to fire a Hwa­song-12 in­ter­me­di­ate range mis­sile that flew over north­ern Ja­pan.

The North declared it a “mean­ing­ful pre­lude” to con­tain­ing the U.S. Pa­cific is­land ter­ri­tory of Guam and the start of more bal­lis­tic mis­sile launches to­ward the Pa­cific Ocean.

South Korean ex­perts said the Au­gust launch was Py­ongyang’s at­tempt to make mis­siles fly­ing over Ja­pan an ac­cepted norm as it seeks to test new pro­jec­tiles and win more mil­i­tary space in the re­gion dom­i­nated by its en­e­mies.

The Of­fices of Guam Home­land Se­cu­rity and Civil De­fense said the lat­est launch posed no im­me­di­ate threat to Guam or the Mari­nas.

South Korea’s De­fense Min­istry said the coun­try’s mil­i­tary con­ducted a live­fire drill of a Hyun­moo-2 bal­lis­tic mis­sile in re­sponse to the North’s launch on Fri­day.